December 14, 2000

7:25 AM

The story of the hippy babysitter is an old one i've been hearing since i was a kid. turns out, if it was real she might only have gottenfive years.
posted by Niccola Six (14 comments total)

double http:// ?

Good link.
posted by pnevares at 8:49 AM on December 14, 2000

Heh, same with the second link.

"five years"
posted by pnevares at 8:51 AM on December 14, 2000

What a strange urban legend. I don't usually associate hippies with infanticide. Urban legends usually have a deep-seated sociological purpose... I suppose the point is that hippies do drugs, which causes them to do crazy things (like mistake babies for turkeys), so you shouldn't trust them with your kids.

The story might make more sense if LSD was mentioned.
posted by waxpancake at 10:18 AM on December 14, 2000

ummm... pnevares, you confuse me!
waxpancake... in the version of the tale that i've most often heard, the babysitter is on LSD... unfortunately, the one i linked to was the only good version i could find online... if any one could find a better one that'd be great.
posted by Niccola Six at 10:23 AM on December 14, 2000

okay, i'm an idiot... i just figured it out. my apologies to everyone!
posted by Niccola Six at 10:24 AM on December 14, 2000

Here's the whole legend on a pretty good urban legend site with a lot of debunking evidence.
posted by owillis at 10:45 AM on December 14, 2000

I was watching a show last friday with my lass about various deaths in england during the early 1900s. One, in which the father had killed his daughter, was almost certainly the victim of those wandering gypsies. So now I blame gypsies for everything, oh and jews, blacks, mansonites. Your alarm didn't go off? Probably because the gypsies stole it. Where are your car keys? Probably the victim of jews. Why is the milk off? Blacks. Why don't your pants fit anymore? Mansonites.

Damn hippys!
posted by holloway at 11:08 AM on December 14, 2000

Okay, this sounds like post-partum depression so severe that it became post-partum psychosis, to me. Absolutely horrifying.

What I want to know is this: why on earth did anyone (the father perhaps, *AHEM*) let this woman spend time alone with this child when she had frequent epileptic seizures often "followed by blackouts of up to 50 minutes" including "one time when she dropped the baby"??!??@?@?@?!?!?!?

Can you say BLATANT NEON WARNING SIGN?

Sounds to me like she should have resumed her medication after the birth, or at least had a helper around. Maybe she could have spent time with another mom or a friend during the day or something, just someone who could have gotten help for her if she had a seizure.

What was her doctor doing to help her control the seizures? Nothing?

I see a pricey malpractice case in the near future, probably brought by the father.

Sigh. What a horrible, horrible thing. Damn, this is gonna give me nightmares. GAH!
posted by beth at 11:09 AM on December 14, 2000

Oh yeah, while I'm wearing my Detective hat, I want to know:

• Was the mother having any difficulties nursing the baby?
• Did anyone notice any signs of post-partum depression?
• Why didn't she resume her seizure-control medication after the birth?
• Was the baby reported to be particularly "fussy" or "difficult" or "unsettled"?
• What kind of support system did she have? (friends, relatives, etc)
• What was her economic status?
• Where was the father when this happened? (the story says "that night" so I guess it wasn't during the day)
• How smooth was the relationship between the mother and father?
• How much help did the dad give her with day-to-day baby care tasks?

But of course I'll never know these things.
posted by beth at 11:14 AM on December 14, 2000

even if u did know them beth, would any of it really make the facts any easier to digest?


posted by Niccola Six at 11:25 AM on December 14, 2000

Perhaps you forgot the most important question of all:
Did the baby taste like chicken?
posted by Wizzle at 1:04 PM on December 14, 2000

Knowing the answers to my questions might point towards a way to make sure that something like this is less likely to happen in the future, if concerned people take steps to make sure that whatever helped cause the situation doesn't happen again.

Of course it wouldn't make anything any easier to digest, not one iota.

That's the nature of tragedy.

The best you can do is try to understand why and how it happened, and keep it from happening again.
posted by beth at 3:20 PM on December 14, 2000

Haha... Turkey... easier to digest....Am I the only one that caught that one?
posted by parvati at 6:02 PM on December 14, 2000

Don't quit your day job.
posted by waxpancake at 11:44 PM on December 14, 2000